Mass Effect: Slips, But Shows Off

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Mass Effect has taken a slight slip. Joystiq helpfully noticed that BioWare community man, Chris Priestly, has informed the hungry masses that things will take three weeks longer. Originally set for what seemed an extremely prompt 6th May, it’s now due to be out in the US by the not unreasaonble 28th May, and over here in Europe by 6th June. This is due to BioWare’s “dedication to excellence”, we’re told, and will allow them some last-minute polish.

But what’s this, one post higher, to raise our cheer once more? It’s the first images of the all-new PC GUI – one of the elements that proves Mass Effect PC is more than your average port. Click for the fullsize version. And there’s three more, found by Joystiq, below.

Yes, same here. Left and right obviously for commands for your party members, bottom for your character, quick slots on top, health bars on the bottom left. Could start playing this without ever having seen more than a few screenshots from the game.

I don’t find this UI all too obvious, but it doesn’t look too bad either.
Really, after Planescape: Torment I think I could accustom to anything (it was the first RPG I played through, so there may be even worse in terms of the interface, I don’t know).

Really, after Planescape: Torment I think I could accustom to anything.

Planescapes UI was really intuitive!
Select your character, left click on landscape to move him/her, left click on characters to talk/attack and right click on items to get a context menu to use special powahs.

@Radiant: Well for each party member you’ve got movement commands (move, attack, defend and the all important group hug ability which enhances the love by 5% for 10 seconds*) and a separate pane for weapon/skill selection. It should all fall into place when you know which icons correspond to which skills.

Also, if it works like the 360 version, then those extra icons in the first and last screens will only show up when the action is paused.

Someone needs to point out to the people who have never played Mass Effect that this UI is not shown at all times. Battles play out in real time with you in direct control of only one character. At any point during the battle you can pause the game to bring up commands for your team (think a cross between GRAW and KOTOR). This UI is what is shown when you pause the game.

Also @James, the UI for Mass Effect was designed using radial menus for use with an analog stick. Also, the weapons and special abilities menus were actually split in to two menus that were pulled up separately. As you can also see from the shots here, there are additional movement commands for your squad members that were not present on the console.

Actually, the movement commands were there in the console version, but were for the whole squad, not individual characters. They were activated using the direction pad (with the various movement commands in approximately the same layout as shown above, so you would aim at somewhere and press up on the d-pad to tell your squad to go there.)

The various icons for abilities seem confusing, I’m sure, but they’re a lot more easy to understand in the game, since you have to choose to learn the abilities before they become available to you, for the most part.